Camcorders are increasingly being used by professionals and amateurs alike to generate videos. However, once a video is made, individuals seldom have the opportunity to re-watch the videos or share them with friends. This is due, in part, to the amount of time that is typically required to view large amounts of unedited video data files. This leads to an urgent need for efficient and effective processing tools for summarizing videos.
Existing video summarization or skimming schemes might fit some users' needs to reduce the size and summarize video data. However, even when a computer is used to implement such traditional techniques, these techniques are typically substantially time consuming, labor intensive, and often require more video processing knowledge than is conveniently available to a non-professional camcorder user.
The following systems and methods address these and other limitations of existing video editing tools.